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<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/23980861">couldn't hope to know that song</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/isamagicdragon/pseuds/isamagicdragon'>isamagicdragon</a>, <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/thegracious/pseuds/thegracious'>thegracious</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Series:</b></td><td>it's not the waking, it's the rising [2]</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>Avatar: The Last Airbender</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>Gen</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>Completed</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2020-05-03</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2020-05-06</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-02 19:27:29</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>General Audiences</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>No Archive Warnings Apply</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>2</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>1,470</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/23980861</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/isamagicdragon/pseuds/isamagicdragon, https://archiveofourown.org/users/thegracious/pseuds/thegracious</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>Five things Zuko will never tell his sister, and five things Azula will never tell her brother. </p><p>[Set in the timeskip of <i>the heat that drives the light, the fire it ignites</i>]</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Relationships:</b></td><td>Azula &amp; Zuko (Avatar)</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Series:</b></td><td>it's not the waking, it's the rising [2]</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Series URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/series/1729060</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Comments:</b></td><td>63</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>1335</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Collections:</b></td><td>Best of Avatar: The Last Airbender</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>1. Zuko</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff"><p>it came to my attention that!!! the title of this fic doesn't!!! fit the theme!!!! ofc it had to be remedied!!! </p><p>edited thegracious 2/17/21, also known as way too long since i uploaded the damn fic to cover up my colossal mistake</p></blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>
  <strong>I</strong>
</p><p>Zuko will never grow his hair long ever again. Azula still wears her topknot proudly, tucks fire lilies into the ribbon in threes, and spends hours making sure her hair is as soft and silky as it was when they had a legion of servants to take care of it. But Zuko? Every time it gets long enough to reach his shoulders, he shears it off with a knife. It gets him odd looks when he goes into the village on market days, but they’re far enough from the mainland that short hair isn't automatically a mark of dishonor. </p><p> </p><p>
  <strong>II</strong>
</p><p>He doesn’t want to go back to the Fire Nation at all. It took them years to make their way to the colonies; years before Azula stopped waking up in the middle of the night to check for assassins or worse. But now, he’s finally got the money to turn the little hut he’d built when he was fourteen into a real house. He  learned how to plant and harvest, and the soybeans are coming in beautifully. He can’t seem to keep wild turtleducks away from his lotus-lily paddies, but that’s alright. There’s a grove of moon peaches and persimmons not far from their hut; in the summer there’s lots of berries there too. They’re living like peasants, but on this mountain in the Earth Kingdom, Zuko’s never felt afraid. </p><p> </p><p>
  <strong>III</strong>
</p><p>Azula has never taken to life in hiding the way Zuko had, even when they were still pretending to be peasant children in the Fire Nation. She’s as good as told him that she thinks he’s debasing himself getting his hands dirty. But working under the scorching sun feels wonderful in a way that mercenary work doesn’t. It’s honest work under Agni’s light, and Zuko can feel Agni’s warmth bleeding into his inner fire, keeping it alive. Sometimes, Zuko thinks that it’s the only reason his fire hasn’t gone out like Azula’s. He used to think that it won't be so bad to live the rest of his life as an anonymous citizen. When they arrived in Shu Jing, Zuko had even thought it could be home. But one day when Zuko was twelve, Azula came back with a smirk on her face, saying that she won them an apprenticeship with the greatest swordmaster who ever lived. Zuko's heart had sunk then; he knew Azula would never let him disappear.</p><p> </p><p>
  <strong>IV</strong>
</p><p>Sometimes, Zuko thinks about Master Piandao. The dao he made in Shu Jing are still carefully maintained; Zuko runs through his drills when he’s done with whatever work needs to be done. He’s <em>good </em>at the dao, and it felt so good to hear that. Master Piandao said he’s good enough to be a master if he wanted — high praise, as Piandao always thought that they were just two orphans an old woman in the village had taken pity on and adopted.  Piandao had called Zuko talented, honorable, a good man. But when Piandao told Zuko that he could be someone people would want to follow, Zuko knew it was time to leave. </p><p> </p><p>
  <strong>V</strong>
</p><p>Azula doesn’t think that Zuko knows about her increasingly desperate attempts to get her firebending back. The loss still lingers between them; Azula managed lightning and lava bending at eight, had spent their entire childhood as their father’s favored child because of her prodigious talent. How could the world have twisted so horribly that it’s <em>Zuko</em> who kept his fire after their escape from their father? He can see that it hurts Azula to see him bend, so he hides his bending from her the way she hides hers from him. But sometimes, he watches her. Her form is all rage and anger now; they were always taught that anger is the core fuel behind firebending. But Zuko thinks: that’s not right. Because year after year, Azula works on her kata, getting angrier and angrier, and doesn’t produce a single flame. </p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0002"><h2>2. Azula</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>
  <strong>I</strong>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>It’s obvious to her: Zuko’s given up on going home. It’s obvious that he likes living in this backwater no-name village, spending his days chasing turtleducks off his lotus-lilies and wading through mud to harvest whatever handful of rice he can eke out of the earth. It’s such a waste — after all, Zuko is the only legitimate heir left to the Dragon Throne. Iroh is ancient and his son is years dead; Ozai’s wives are dropping like flies without a single child to show for the trouble. Mother’s work, no doubt. But Zuko? A young, handsome prince, with a tragically heroic story, a master of dao at fourteen and a firebender unlike any the Fire Nation has seen in a hundred years. The throne is his if he wants it. But Azula doesn’t need to ask if he does. If he wanted to be Fire Lord, all he had to do was let Father kill Azula.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <strong>II</strong>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>And that’s why she stays, even if it’s an insult to Agni’s royal line to watch her brother muddying his hands with peasant work. She thought her father loved her, but he traded her life for the throne like a copper coin. Azula will never forget that the price of her survival was Zuko’s crown, Zuko’s home, Zuko’s mother, and half of Zuko’s face. And she will never forget that after days of delirium, when her brother finally fought his way to consciousness, he had smiled as much as he could and told her she was worth it all.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <strong>III</strong>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>Azula is good at history, mathematics. She gets better prices for Zuko’s vegetables at market days, and if she didn’t keep iron control over their money they wouldn’t have gotten this far. But something in that equation doesn’t quite compute for Azula. She worries over it at night, stacks up a crown prince’s privileges against a life hiding in the Earth Kingdom, pulling up weeds with an awful sister and getting mud permanently caked in your fingernails. Ozai can’t reach them here, for one. Another point in her favor: Zuko always loved turtleducks. Zuko’s clearly working with a set of weights and measures Azula doesn’t understand, and Azula would never stoop so low as to ask him to explain. Instead, she makes herself too useful to discard. Not at the farm, obviously, but her expertise comes in useful here and there. Zuko never asks her where she gets the extra money, and she tries not to wonder if he’d be disgusted at the thought of a princess selling her sword like a common thug. But Azula never leaves anything to chance. She learned too early that love can only go so far.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <strong>IV</strong>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>Azula doesn’t regret spending so long at Shu Jing; they needed to learn, and she refused to learn from anyone other than the best. And Piandao is certainly the best; there is no other person in the world who could train a student to mastery of any and all weapons. Even if the risk of exposure was great, two years spent as Master Piandao’s common-born apprentices meant that Azula would never be helpless again — not against a bender and not against the most skilled warriors. But there was something she was missing. She could see it lurking behind Piandao’s eyes while he watched her running kata, in the way he held her back and made her paint stupid portraits of random villagers when she could have been training. Zuzu had loved it there, soaking up Piandao’s praise like a sunflower turning towards the sun. But Piandao — he wanted something from Azula that he never had the guts to <em>specify</em>. He was just like Mother. Azula was glad to leave him behind.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <strong>V</strong>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>Her fire isn't gone. It <em>isn't</em>. She can still feel it under her skin, and she's checked and checked and <em>checked</em> — it isn't a phantom sensation that she convinces herself is there. She still has the barest spark left within her, can still feel Agni rise at dawn and sink at dusk, can still perfectly trace His journey east to west. But the spark won't follow her will at all; a far cry from the unconscious control she had as a child. The forms are nothing difficult to master, even the scrolls of the advanced sets. But every time she tries them the forms remain cold; she can't even produce a puff of smoke. She had bent lightning at eight. None of those forms should be beyond her. Every training session ends in the same way, with a gradual slide to uncontrolled rage that Azula is always ashamed of — not of the fury, but its impotence. What comes after is worse: a terrible, awful suspicion that she'd traded her bending for Zuko's life. The worst days are the days when she finds herself wondering if it was worth it. </p>
  </div><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_foot_notes"><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
          <p>The last chapter in this ficlet! We hope you guys like it. The next chapter of <i>ignites</i> should be out soon. :)</p>
        </blockquote></div></div>
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